1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic capacitor and a method of manufacturing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic components using a ceramic material include capacitors, inductors, piezoelectric elements, varistors, thermistors, and the like.
Among ceramic electronic components using a ceramic material, a multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) has advantages such as compactness, guaranteed high capacity, and ease of mountability.
An MLCC is a chip-type condenser commonly installed in imaging devices such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs), plasma display panels (PDPs), and the like, computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and the like, serving to charge and discharge electricity.
An MLCC may include a plurality of dielectric layers, first and second internal electrodes disposed to face each other with a dielectric layer interposed therebetween, and first and second external electrodes electrically connected to the first and second internal electrodes, respectively.
Recently, as electronic products have been reduced in size, MLCCs used in electronic products have also been required to be smaller and have a high capacity.
Thus, MLCCs including thinned dielectric layers and internal electrodes so as to contribute to reductions in product size and having an increased lamination amount of dielectric layers so as to contribute to high capacity in a product have been manufactured, but there is a limitation in increasing capacity of a product with such a configuration.
Thus, in order to increase capacity of a product, a so-called bottom mount-type MLCC having a structure in which an overlap region of inner electrodes is increased and lead out portions of the internal electrodes are formed together on any one of surfaces of a ceramic body (for example, a lower surface of the ceramic body) so as to be mounted on a board, or the like, has been proposed.
In the case of the bottom mount-type MLCC, a width-direction margin portion is provided in a corner portion of a dielectric layer such that lead out portions of different electrodes do not overlap.
However, the width-directional margin portion is positioned to be closer to a front edge of the dielectric layer, and thus, when dielectric layers are laminated, a step of the corner portion in the width direction may be increased relative to a central portion in which the internal electrodes are formed.
Also, the width-directional margin portion has a quadrangular step-like shape, and thus, when a plurality of dielectric layers are compressed, local non-uniformity occurs due to a material transfer in the corner portion of the ceramic body, causing cracks or delamination in the corner portion of the ceramic body to degrade reliability.
Patent document 1 below presented a structure in which lead out portions of internal electrodes are led out to the same surface of a board, but it does not disclose a structure in which a body part of an internal electrode and an inner connection portion of a lead out portion are curved.